The Foster Girls

by Lin Stepp

  “You don’t like foxes?” Scott asked, coming around the corner.

  “They’re cute to look at, but often a lot of trouble to people. “

  Scott raised his eyebrows. “So, you think I’m cute to look at?” he teased.

  “We were talking about foxes, not you.” Vivian refused to be baited. “Where’s that spaghetti you’ve been raving about?”

  He grinned, obviously pleased to see that she seemed less upset now. “The sauce is in the freezer just waiting to be heated up. I’ll get that and the pasta started right now. Do you think you could make a salad and get some French bread buttered and ready to put in the oven?”

  “Sure thing,” she assured him. Nothing could be gained by being uncooperative.

  They puttered around together in the kitchen making a quick dinner for the next twenty minutes. Vivian had little to say, but Scott chatted away cheerily, regaling her with camp stories and trying to get her to laugh. He was making an obvious effort to be congenial, but Vivian found it hard to relax, knowing an inquisition was lurking just around the corner.

  “Good spaghetti,” she commented finally, as they started to eat together.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  As they finished their dinner, Vivian noticed Scott was watching her from across the table.

  She looked up at him. “You’re staring at me again.”

  “You’re a beautiful woman to watch.” He flashed her a charming smile.

  Vivian sighed heavily. “Why don’t you tell me what you’ve learned, Scott?” she asked, tired of the suspense now.

  He crossed his arms, ready to cut to the chase, too. “I had some concerns when you wouldn’t tell me about yourself over at the farmhouse. I waited a few days, hoping you’d decide to come over and talk to me like I asked you to. I knew you were lying to me about why you were here. When you’ve been a camp director long enough, you begin to get good at telling truth from fiction. As I told you, I don’t like lies.”

  “So you’ve said,” Vivian replied.

  He studied her for a moment. “My mother came by after her visit with you. She said she and Aunt Mary were simply charmed by you. She was chatting away merrily about you having been adopted and having lost your parents at a young age. She told me about the family that took you in, Dorothy and Roger Owen, and how you said they had been good to you. She thought it was such a shame you’d lost your people and thought it was so sweet you wanted to come back here for your sabbatical to look for your father’s family. Was any of that story true, Vivian?”

  She gave him a blazing look. “Actually, it all is, except that Dorothy and Roger’s last name is Mero. I’m being protective of people I love right now, Scott. And I have a right to keep my private life private, if I want to. It’s not my obligation to tell you or anyone else what I don’t want known about any aspect of my personal life. I don’t have anything dark or illegal or shameful in my background, and, to be quite frank, I resent you snooping into my past as you have. You have no right to do that.”

  “It is my view, Vivian, that whenever a person lies, they give others the right to look into their lives to learn the truth.” His eyes narrowed dangerously. “As I told you, I have a camp full of kids here every summer. I have to be protective of that. I also care a great deal about my grandmother’s place, and I want to keep it safe.”

  Vivian gave him a surly look. “When I discussed renting your grandmother’s house, no one suggested that a full background search would be needed.”

  “Well, I decided to conduct one anyway.” Scott sent her a pointed look. “It wasn’t that hard, Vivian. I decided to assume you really were a professor, and I started with small colleges in northern California. Mother thought she remembered the town Betsy said you lived in, so it didn’t take much searching to find the names of the colleges around that area. I called each one telling them I was trying to locate a Dr. Vivian Delaney in their English department who I wanted to consult about some research I was doing in British literature and folklore.”

  “Evidently, you know how to lie well, too,” Vivian put in nastily.

  Scott shrugged. “At Armitage College, when I was transferred over to the English department, this nice little receptionist said a Dr. Vivian Mero had taught in those subjects in the last year, but not a Dr. Vivian Delaney. I acted as though I must have had the name wrong and gave a description of you to try to verify that Dr. Mero was indeed who I was looking for. The receptionist said Dr. Mero had not been working at the school since last year, but that your description matched the picture in their college yearbook. I asked where I might get in touch with you, as I’d heard you might be on sabbatical, and she said that you had left the college’s employment and that you were not on sabbatical.”

  “And?” asked Vivian angrily.

  “And she told me conspiratorially that she thought there might have been some kind of problem when you were on staff, but that the department head got mad whenever she tried to ask about it. So, now it’s time for you to fill me in on the rest,” said Scott. “You have obviously left your job or have been terminated, and you are obviously using a false name here as a lessee. I think I found out all I needed to know for now.”

  An anxious thought hit Vivian then. “You didn’t call my adopted parents, the Meros, did you?”

  His eyes locked with hers. “No, I thought it was time for me to talk with you a little more first.”

  Inwardly, Vivian heaved a huge sigh. He knew some, but not all. She needed to think now how she should respond. And she needed to be as truthful as she could be. Obviously, Scott could smell a lie a mile away.

  “Aren’t you going to serve me dessert?” she asked, stalling for a little more time to think.

  “I thought you girls were always watching your weight and skipping dessert,” he said, teasingly.

  “Only sometimes,” she responded dryly. “But some days in life seem to call for dessert, and this is certainly one of those for me.”

  Scott laughed.

  “Besides.” She smiled at him. “I saw chocolate ice cream in your refrigerator when I was getting the ice out for the drinks, and it’s been calling my name ever since.”

  Scott went in the kitchen to dish out some ice cream, which gave Vivian time to clear her mind and plan what she wanted to tell him next.

  After spooning down a few bites of ice cream, she looked up at him candidly and began. “All right, Scott. Your information was accurate. I was basically terminated from my job at Armitage. It’s not something I’m exactly proud of or interested in telling everyone about right now. In one sense, I am on a sabbatical while I decide if I want to go back to another university to work a year from now. I could teach again, Scott. I have good credentials.”

  “Why were you ‘basically terminated’ from your job at Armitage?” Scott parroted her words back to her in a sarcastic tone she didn’t like.

  She glared at him for that. “Because basically, the college disagreed about how I should conduct my outside personal life.”

  He raised his eyebrows archly.

  “Not that type of conduct,” she snapped at him. “It wasn’t that kind of personal matter. I did some fiction writing the department didn’t think highly of.”

  “Something controversial?” He leaned forward with interest. “Something racy and sexy?”

  “If you’ll quit asking me questions, I might just tell you about it,” Vivian told him testily. “And I don’t want you to make any more calls to people about my life, Scott.”

  She frowned and stopped to jab at the last of her ice cream. “I think I’d better go back a little ways with this story first.”

  Vivian looked up to find him watching her intently

  “I want to be sure you’re satisfied that you have enough information about me to make you happy.” Vivian lifted her chin and met his gaze squarely. “First off, I really was born Vivian Leigh Delaney. My father was a Delaney, and that is my real birth name, Scott. The Mero’s were good to me and
I agreed later that they could adopt me. This changed my name legally to Mero, but I am still Vivian Delaney, too, in a sense. I mostly told the truth there, Scott. And the other things I told your mother and your Aunt Mary were true, also. My life is really not as complicated or as intriguing as you want to believe.”

  Chapter 12

  “So, is this where I get your whole life story now?” Scott asked teasingly.

  She glared back at him testily. “Yes, this is where you get my whole life story.” Her mouth tightened in irritation. “It seems to be the only thing that will satisfy your fervent curiosity.”

  “Good. That’s exactly what I want to hear, Vivian.” He grinned smugly.

  Vivian felt like kicking him.

  “Want some coffee?’ he asked her, changing the subject. “I’ll start making it, if you just keep talking.”

  “Fine.” She bit out the word with resignation. There was no going back now.

  She sighed and began her story. “The Meros were both college professors at a liberal arts college outside of Redding called Sierra Vista College. They were an older middle-years couple that had never had children. Roger Mero was a dean who worked in the Education Department, still teaching the occasional class, and Dorothy was a professor of Children’s Literature in the library science program. It was a nice fit for me moving in with them. My mother had owned a little used bookstore in Mendocino that she had inherited from her mother. We lived above it in a cozy little apartment. I loved her and I loved the store. She’d always said she would leave it to me someday when she died. Unfortunately, she died a little too soon for that to happen.”

  “That must have been tough.” Scott put a cup of hot coffee down in front of her.

  “It was,” she said, stirring in sweetener and cream before continuing her story.

  “But there were positives,” she told him. “I’d been raised around books, was already academically bent, and I thrived in the college environment where the Meros worked and lived. Their conversations were always about college, classes, students, books, and their ongoing research. Dorothy was always bringing home children’s books for me to read and would ask my opinion about them. Sometimes I went to class with her or to the office with Roger. I missed my mother dreadfully at first, but, gradually, I came to love living with the Meros. Children adapt.”

  “I’m really sorry you lost your family, Vivian.”

  She smiled at Scott. “Thanks,” she replied. “It was a hard time. But it could have been worse for me. The Meros had a nice place - a big brick house in an old, established neighborhood that was only two blocks from the college. I could walk or bike over to the campus or down to the little township between. Redding is a pretty place. Often I missed Mendocino and living by the sea, but I learned to love the mountains.” She paused. “Have you ever been to California?”

  “No. But I’ve been out west before and to Tahoe, which isn’t too far away. Go on with your story.”

  “All right,” she said, sipping on her coffee again.

  Obviously, she wasn’t going to shift his attention off the subject this time. “I soon made a friend, Jan Paulton, on the next street over, which really helped my life at this time. We became best friends from then on. We played on the streets in the suburban neighborhood around the college together, biked to the library and the park, went down to the drugstore to get a shake, and went to school together. I often stayed with Jan’s family when the Meros were at campus meetings or away for trips. Her family was like a second family to me. She had two older brothers and a baby brother, and her Grandmother Hester lived with them, too. Her father was the minister of our church, and her mother was our Campfire Girls leader. So, you see, I was just a nice, normal girl growing up, Scott – nothing scary for you to worry about with your campers.” She looked up to find him watching her steadily. “Did you stay with the Meros until you graduated from high school?”

  “Yes, I did, and then Jan and I both went to college right there at Sierra Vista. I stayed with the Meros through undergraduate school, too. Professors’ kids got free tuition, and I was leery of going off on my own just yet. I finished at twenty-one with a BA in English and then received a Graduate Assistantship to California State in Chico, just 80 miles below Redding. I could drive home easily when I had a long weekend or a holiday or I could take the Amtrak.”

  She stirred her coffee idly remembering. “At California State, I was an RA, or resident assistant, in Blair Hall, the Honors College Dorm on campus. I worked with the students in the dorm, tutored English comp on the side, and graduated at twenty-three with my master’s in English. The Meros were proud of me. Roger said I needed to branch out then, go out of state for my PhD, so I took an offer for a Teaching Assistantship to get my doctorate in English at The University of Oregon in Eugene.”

  Vivian stopped to laugh at herself. “It was the closest school offer I got that was also out-of-state. I really wasn’t very bold then. But I grew a lot in confidence in those years at Eugene. Grad assistants get a huge load of classes to teach, so I quickly got over being shy and realized that I loved to teach. I also loved my students.”

  “And how many of the boys fell in love with Professor Mero?” Scott asked, grinning at her.

  “Oh, there were a few that flirted.” She looked up at him, knowing this was one answer she could be truthful about. “But I really didn’t have much time for young men or dating. My doctoral workload of teaching, taking classes, and then doing research and my dissertation were exhausting and took all my time. It seems now that those years just flew by, even though the days seemed long then.”

  “Want another cup of coffee?” Scott asked, getting up to get himself one.

  She sighed. “I probably shouldn’t, but yes. Too much coffee sometimes keeps me up at night.”

  “Then we’ll switch to wine next,” Scott said, passing her a grin. “And get sloshed.”

  Vivian giggled. It was good to laugh for a minute.

  Scott came back with their coffees and sat down again.

  “So you got your doctorate and started job hunting.” He caught her glance. “How did you end up at Armitage College? Was it because it was close to home?”

  “Perhaps, and because I felt comfortable with the environment,” Vivian admitted. She had decided that the more readily she answered all of Scott’s questions tonight, the less likely he was to probe further into areas of her life she still wanted to keep to herself. The point was to appear cooperative.

  She smiled at him. “Armitage wasn’t too far from Redding, and, it wasn’t too far up the coast above Mendocino where I’d spent my early years. Plus, it was a small liberal arts college more like Sierra Vista where I’d spent so many happy times.”

  “So what happened there to screw it up? Surely just writing some fiction books couldn’t get you fired.”

  “I never said I was fired.” Vivian fidgeted with her spoon on the table while she talked. “But I was pressured to resign and I did. As the head of my department put it, I had a conflict of interests.”

  “Tell me about that,” Scott pressed.

  Vivian sighed. “Okay, if you like. I came to Armitage to replace Dr. Norman Beeker, who had just died. I never knew him, but the kids called him “The Beek”. Seeing his picture later, I understood why.” She giggled.

  “To be frank, I entered a very stuffy English Department at Armitage.” She looked up at him with candor. “I didn’t fully pick up on that fact at my interviews or I might have considered another school. The department had distinguished itself over the years in the English field by many scholarly publications, textbooks, and in-depth studies on prominent writers. My master’s on Andrew Lang attracted their attention. They were hoping, of course, that I would carry on the department tradition. And in my first year, I did have several related academic publications in some noteworthy journals. So they were pleased with me. I also was a very good and beloved instructor. My student evaluations were always excellent and students stood in line
to get into my classes. This proved to be both good and bad.”

  “How could that be bad?”

  “Not all professors are as good with people as with their books and research. My department seemed to have an overload of scholarly individuals who were generally not beloved by the students. This made me different from the norm.”

  “I imagine you were great.” Scott grinned. “And I can remember a lot of my own past professors that were not. So why didn’t they like your fiction?”

  “The head of the department, Dr. Percy Wright, was an expert in literary criticism, and he taught courses by the same name. He had an academic disdain for what he called ‘trashy, modern fiction and the people who perpetuate it.’ The associate head of the department, Dr. Stillman, agreed with his views. He had published several textbooks and multitudes of articles, many attacking the poor vocabulary and writing styles in the bulk of secular novels. The two other full professors in the department were in harmony with the first two, in general. A snobby sort of disdain for secular literature exists in some academic arenas. And all of these faculty members were in their fifties or above and were a closely knit set of colleagues.”

  “Were you the only young professor on staff?” Scott raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like a snobby bunch.”

  “I guess it was a snobby bunch,” Vivian conceded. “The other associate professors close to my age were Dr. Fleenor Amons and Dr. John McCampbell. Amons was a chubby, bald, and very shy man in his forties who taught Rhetoric and Technical Writing, and McCampbell was a pompous, overly dramatic, and outspoken young man in his thirties who taught Drama and Shakespeare and had once been a short-term actor. He thought so well of himself that it was just painful to spend time with him.”

  She laughed and so did Scott.

  “So who did you run around with? Surely not that drab bunch.”

  Vivian smiled at him in spite of herself. “Well, I lived in this wonderful old Victorian boarding house up on the cliffs by the coast and near the college. I had a great little apartment there, and the rest of the house was full of students and local hippies, artisans, and shop owners. We would sit around on the big porch in the evenings while some played guitar and sang. It drew other students and locals from around the neighborhood. I was a comfortable part of that group.”